


Try to Change

by VODLIX



Series: Who Speaks for the Voiceless? [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different Powers (klaus only), Animal Transformation, BAMF Klaus Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves Deserves Better, Ben Hargreeves Lives, Child Abuse, Diego Hargreeves is Bad at Feelings, Dissociation, Family Issues, Genderfluid Klaus Hargreeves, Homelessness, Hurt Klaus Hargreeves, Identity Issues, Klaus Hargreeves Whump, Loss of Identity, Misgendering (its not a focus but its there), Number Five | The Boy Has a Name, Past Torture, Protective Ben Hargreeves, Secret Identity, Shapeshifting, Sober Klaus Hargreeves, Tags Contain Spoilers, Telepathic Bond, Vanya Hargreeves Needs A Hug, biweekly updates, no identity reveal though, no points for guessing what it is
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:40:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24822484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VODLIX/pseuds/VODLIX
Summary: Somewhere, somewhen, there was a Klaus who was never "The Seance.”He was, instead, named with the self-explanatory title:  “The Shifter.”———Shapeshifter Klaus grows up in a house, not a home. It's funny how the multiverse tends to repeat itself.
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Grace Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Klaus Hargreeves
Series: Who Speaks for the Voiceless? [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1795438
Comments: 36
Kudos: 266





	1. Child Soldiers can be Payed with Chocolate.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there, folks!  
> This was previously titled 'copycat'. The new title is inspired by Mother Mother's song: Try to change.  
> Just to let you know: WARNINGS ARE AT THE END OF CHAPTERS. The tags may change so if you have triggers, be sure to keep an ear out.  
> Just to let you know to clear confusion before it starts: Klaus uses he/him pronouns. Reginald and his siblings refer to him using them/them pronouns because Reginald believed that if Klaus was raised male or female it would hinder his shapeshifting ability.  
> I just wanted to get that out there for comments because lord knows PC can get finicky.
> 
> Updates will be Mondays and Fridays and this is the first work in a series I plan to write :)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Umbrella Academy was founded on the belief the world would end in not-so-distant future; And so, Reginald Hargreeves adopted seven children with the goal of preventing calamity.

_[Before The Umbrella Academy, years earlier than their debut, there had always been a clear divide between myself and my siblings._

_In the eyes of media attention, I was civilian, but in the endeavour for my father’s approval, I was subhuman._

_The rift between us grew as we did, and even now I wonder what they think of me.]_

* * *

  
Four could do this. Day 1 on the job and he was ready to smile for the camera. 

  
Luther ordered him to enter the bank as a hostage and relay information, he’d artfully chosen to appear as a 20-something girl— attractive but not too eye-catching, lord forbid he looked ugly— wearing a cropped shirt with boot-cut jeans. 

  
“Get them behind the counter!”

  
One of the criminals in charge of herding hostages had guided him with a wandering hand, giving Four reason to believe he may have overshot ‘attractive’.

  
He shuffled behind a larger woman dressed in a pink blazer who was being overly loud, joining the others in protest of being zip-tied and manhandled. Reaching up to a decorative earpiece he lowered his voice among the panic and called out to Luther.

  
“4 assailants in the foyer, 5 are in the vault. 22 hostages with me, 4 unaccounted. Over.”

  
“Copy.” Came a voice in his ear, accompanied by distinguishable with panting. Four was pleased with the mental image of a proud Luther scaling the building just so that he could make a dramatic entrance. He briefly entertained the idea of their proud leader falling and ruining his perfect record. 

  
In the commotion, the robbers failed to turn off the TV in the seating area of the foyer which quietly broadcast the subtitles from a news crew outside. The reporter was white and formal, dressed in gloves and a coat, crowded by lookalikes talking to recording devices. 

“This is Jim Hellerman, reporting live for Chanel 2 news outside of the Capitol West Bank at main and sixth. A group of heavily armed men stormed the bank not three hours ago and took an unknown number of hostages.”

Out of the corner of Four’s eye, he noticed Allison skip up to one of the criminals who appeared to engage in a short exchange before he raised his gun towards one of his peers. As the rest of The Umbrella Academy made their own entrance, Four snapped the ties and started helping hostages, grabbing a knife off one of Five’s victims. 

  
“Thank you! Thank you so much!” The lady from before wailed, others following suit in gratitude. 

  
As soon as his mission was done and the civilians had cleared out he shifted to his more usual appearance: the second tallest sibling at 5’7” with vivid green eyes hidden by a domino mask and brown hair. This was the image Reginald wanted him to project. Tall, but not taller than One. Pale, but not as pale as One. Attractive, but not as conventionally attractive as One. Androgynous, but not so much that it confuses people.

  
Four decided to express himself through his eyes, as an asset the media doesn’t get to see because of their masks, and gives himself vivid green eyes, pinprick pupils and thick lashes. The kinds of eyes people remember, because Four’s only job is to blend in, and he hates it. 

  
After Ben has finished in the vault, tracking blood on the marble floor, they assembled in order and marched out the door and posed for the media. They ate them up and shortly they were introduced as America’s first real-life superhero team: The Umbrella Academy.

  
After all the praise, he held Six’ shaking hand in the car ride back, being careful not to stain his own sleeve with blood, and drew patterns into his palm.

  
When they got home, Mom gave them all hot chocolate with marshmallows and whipped cream.

* * *

The Umbrella Academy marched out of the mansion’s sunroom and into the courtyard, eyes low and the taste of breakfast still on their tongues. Luther kicked his feet out in an exaggerated stride attempting to set an example for his less enthusiastic siblings following behind him. Ben nearly tripped. The chill in the air left One-through-Six jealous of Vanya who was dressed in earmuffs and boots, where the other’s were stuck damp and cold with the rainwater collected by the leaf-plastered ground seeping through their training uniform shoes.

Vanya was behind her Father, holding a clipboard and pen, eyeing her siblings with green envy. Today, like most other days, her job was to keep score while Reginald wrote more in-depth observations.

  
“Today’s mission…” Luther’s demonstration of sub-par climbing ability at their debut left Reginald angry, although he wouldn’t reprimand his favourite over something fixable.“ Is to scale the side of the courtyard and reach the roof. You may achieve this by any means necessary.”

  
Reginald had hoped Number One would either learn from his mistakes and be better, or realise his incompetencies and work around them. One was a great soldier— strong and having a blind faith towards authority— however he was never very good at learning. To the young boy, he was either good at something, or he refused to admit it. Reginald hoped this exercise would motivate Luther to value his siblings’ skills and use them to his benefit rather than his detriment.

  
“You may start when Number Seven blows the whistle.”

  
It took Five the time Vanya finished blowing the start whistle for him to already be draped on the roof-edge, legs crossed and looking at them condescendingly from his perch. Naturally Five’s power “cheated” in terms of races, although as a result, he lacked the physical strength the others had built from training.

  
Next was Four who took to a cast-iron pipe reached the height of the building up the tallest window. He quickly and efficiently scaled it using connecting pipes and windows as footholds and managed to rock over the lip of the tiling by mantling the rain pipes and snow guards. 

  
Five greeted him with a high five, Four plopping down next to him and resting an arm across Five’s shoulder like they always did. Out of all the siblings, the Nameless Duo were the closest. Having powers relating to physical manipulation (the alteration of matter through its appearance or location), the two shared lots of tutoring lessons from Pogo and Grace on biology and chemistry. Four learned sociology, psychology and veterinary sciences whereas Five learnt geography, architecture and theoretical physics, anything beyond that the two ended up doing together, they even followed along with each other's personalised curriculums wherever they could. The Boy and The Shifter, joint at the hip.

  
Despite their academic kinship, they found an addition to their duo in Ben. Ben’s power, containing and releasing a separate entity, didn’t rely on any form of study, but instead a super-human level of restraint. Perhaps that's why Ben got along with the Nameless Duo— the ability to put up with the muttering and the wall-writing and the bickering and the smugness. Ben balanced out their ambition and remind them they were kids: they could dream and entertain non-fiction once in a while. They’d chat about magical worlds without training or fighting where Ben could run a bookshop and Five could be an explorer and Four could be a model or an actor or a dancer. 

  
It's because of this kinship, that when Ben’s head peeks above the tiled roof-edge they both stand to offer a hand each, hauling him up over and the three sitting and chattering while they wait for the others.

  
Diego was next, having bridged the gaps between the old oriel windows. His abilities in trajectory manipulation and optional breathing meant the only advantage he had was reaching the top without being out of breath. 

Next was Luther who scrambled up the same way Diego had, his egoism compelling him to take the more challenging route and refusing to recognise that the method required skill rather than his abundant strength. 

  
Allison reached the top the same time, having followed Four and Ben’s lead by climbing the pipes, taking her time so she didn’t have to worry about any of the boys looking up the impractical uniform’s skirt. 

  
Five teleported Four and Ben down with him stumbling from the strain but happy he could help them, and the others all trickled down with the grace of a dog being hurled downstairs. Luther didn’t even bother with descending the wall, jumping down and proving just how unbreakable his strength-enhanced bones were.

  
By the time they were lined up for evaluation, Allison was wincing at her scraped-up knees and Luther was resisting the urge to fret. Four scoffed, shifting to heal his scrapes and retract the shifted claws he’d used in his climbing.

  
Diego was praised for his ingenuity and their Father expressed disapproval and distrust towards Four’s unexplained proficiency. Reginald was paranoid and didn’t like when any of them were good at something without training– it meant they were individual people. Luther was given a cold glance and they were dismissed to their allotted self-study.

  
They made their way inside and collectively walked to the library. Vanya walked to the foyer to pick up a new music-sheet book from Pogo and she heads up to the soundproof room on the other side of the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: Child soldiers, childhood abuse and crimefighting (guns, briefly mentioned blood)


	2. Who made you?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What is The Umbrella Academy to you?”  
> “Home,” Five lied to the interviewer, his gaze flickered to Reginald’s silhouette looming behind the cameramen, “It's home.”

_[Four was melodramatic, unreliable and rebellious, an actor who played by their own script._

_Being a shape-shifter, I don’t believe any of my siblings trusted them, although this was a behaviour first learnt from our father._

_When we were young enough that Four disregarded punishments, the paranoid old man had Four chipped with a fail-safe inhibitor and a tracker, like a dog, to prevent them from abusing their power, just like Five._

_The two of them were loose canons and Reginald knew that they had the power necessary to rebel against him if left unmonitored. ]_

* * *

Today they’d turned 8 and for the first time, they were celebrating their collective birthday. Grace, under Pogo’s supervision, was to give them names. 

  
In the past, the only thing signifying their birthday was a singular sweet for dessert and a warm edge to Mom’s smile. Reginald usually didn’t notice, but on one occasion where he had, they’d been brought to a swimming-pool and told to learn to swim without any instructors. 

  
Two, not needing to breathe and not yet aware that others did, had walked across the bottom of the pool, pulling people deeper by their ankles— and thus the concept of The Kraken started in Reginald’s journal. By the end of the day, 6 of 7 siblings knew the sensation of throwing up water and they spend Fridays for the next 4 months repeating the ordeal until the 4 year-olds could float.

  
In retrospect, it was unlikely their father was aware of their birthday. It was likely just normal training.

“Your name is Luther.” Mom dubbed One, christening him with a kiss to his blond hair, “A strong name for such a strong growing boy.”

He grinned, small fists grabbing his shirt as a squealed with glee. He ran back to the other’s and they all whispered his name to him in confirmation and his smile grew wider— He had a name! He was Luther!

“And you, little man, are named Diego.” Diego’s back straightened, puffing his chest out in pride. Grace ruffled his hair and he devolved into giggles, batting her hand away with a “Tha-tha-thank y-you”

“And you, my dear, will be Allison” Grace held her by the cheek and, similar to Luther, kissed her forehead. Their Mom brushed her hair back, mirroring the polite smile and ignoring Four who’d started shouting their names just to hear them.

Grace turned away from the newly dubbed Allison, reaching out to touch the next child’s shoulder “And Five, your—“ 

“What about Four?” The siblings quieted down, Five stiffened emitting a small growl “Doesn’t Four get a name?”

“I— Dear I don’t know what you—“

“You haven’t given Four a name.”

“I— Dear—” she appeared to buffer over the right response, cutting short in an electronic way that only happened when her code clashed (‘Must act as a mother to children’ conflicts frequently enough with ‘Must obey creator’ for it to be a recognised facial expression), “that's because he won’t be receiving one. Given the nature of their powers, your father believes giving them a name would affect your powers.”

Four sunk back, eyes brown and hair black as if to morn himself. Five grumbled, walking over to Four to take his hand and walk away from their siblings, “Then I don’t want a name. Lord forbid it limits me as well.”

They had to wait till the day after to hear the names: Ben and Vanya. 

Months later, the two stuffed in library seats, nesting among piles of books, Five chuckled to himself and put a name dictionary down on his chest.

“Klaus.” Four startled, nearly dropping his ‘Indo-European Linguistics’ book onto the floor.

“What?”

“Your name. I’ve decided it’s Klaus.” Five grinned, slamming the name book shut. “It means victory of the people, although I picked it more for its sound. It seems very… you.”

“Oh, okay.” Four smiled, burying his head further in his language book, hiding the moisture in his eyes.

A couple of weeks after that, Klaus slipped Five a piece of paper during Biology class with an illustration of a flame with the name ‘Aidan’ delicately written in cursive underneath it. 

Aidan loved it and made sure Klaus knew by flashing him a huge honest-to-god grin. Klaus started counting every time Aidan smiled at him.

* * *

They turned 14 today— they turned 14 today and Aidan hadn’t.

For the Hargreeves siblings, the worst thing about Five running away was not knowing: did he time-travel? Was he alive? Was he safe?

They all looked to Four for answers, being the one who knew Five best. The one who, since Five’s disappearance, wore straight walnut hair and a sharp jaw with familiar hands flecked with moles at the knuckles. 

Four told them Five had time-travelled. If anything else were true, they would have a body. He didn’t admit to them about the tracker in Aidan’s arm, or the notes Klaus had found in his bedside draw littered with symbols far above The Shifter’s pay-grade and cliff-notes that brought tears to his eyes.

_[1969: Apollo 11, David Bowie. Stonewall. —I bet Klaus would love to visit 1969.]_

He wished he could have gone with him.

Klaus came out to Aidan when they were 11 and he’d just studied households for his sociology classes with Allison on ‘Same-sex couples’ and ‘Heterosexual couples’. Klaus didn’t know where he fits in all that. He was a boy, but everyone other than Aidan called him 'they' and 'sibling' rather than 'he' and 'brother'. He liked the same gender— boys— but how could he be gay if only closest brother saw him as a boy?

Aidan told him to shut up and be himself. Klaus decided he could be whoever he wanted to be and, after some research, identified most with the ambiguity of the term ‘queer’.

He turned to the last page.

_[If you’re reading this, it's likely an experiment went wrong or I was forced to use my secondary power without preparation. I’m sorry it came to this. Klaus, I’m sorry._

_Time travel would imply that if I were to be lost to time, even for 50 years, I may be able to return to you within what you would perceive as seconds. If I don’t, please don’t wait for me._

_I love you,_

_Aidan.]_

Klaus decided that wherever Aidan was, he wouldn’t want Klaus to cry, so he didn’t. He bottled up his feelings, and when that didn't work, he shifted so he didn’t have tear ducts. An introductory lesson on hormones later, and he supplied himself with enough shapeshifted serotonin that he ended up in the infirmary after a seizure.

Aidan had wanted him to be happy, he’ll just have to study harder.

* * *

Years passed, Four hadn’t gotten better. His siblings watched as he deteriorated, hands shaking from adrenaline and body shifting randomly. He’d disappear at night and reappear looking slightly less familiar than before. Blond or redhead, Asian or black, tall or short, masculine or feminine. He’d randomly shift to hold characteristics of almost anyone he interacted with, his powers evolving into uncontrollable imitation. 

On one memorable occasion he’d sprouted Reginald’s beard and eyes, startling Luther so badly he dropped a plate, and on another he shrank 2 feet while walking down the stairs with Pogo, ending with a visit to grace to dress him in casts for a couple of days.

Reginald was conflicted over the development. On one hand, Four was no longer able to take advantage of his power, and on the other, it made him useless. Where previously he had to copy entire identities, now he flashed in and out of non-existent people crafted from preexistent attributes, rendering him incapable of simple tasks like running consistently or interacting with civilians. Reginald was disappointed in his behaviour. He wanted to train the boy out of his lack of self-control while exercising the new and useful ability. If the boy could learn to stay still in a form, he could be useful for infiltration.

One night he dragged Four from his room to a solitary darkroom, tying him down to a chair and setting up a projector that flashed images of thousand’s of mugshots from the US law enforcement database. 

Four would liquidise. His body morphing into too many people at once, screams ranging from high to low, raw to healed, gargling blood from healed injuries. Eventually, disassociation took hold, his body going numb as his mind was ripped away from the sensations.

Instinctively, he shifted his adrenal glands into overdrive, causing a heart attack that had Grace running in, overwriting Reginald’s code to stay out.

Hours later, waking up in the infirmary bed, Four felt like a dishevelled puzzle built from thousands of forced-together pieces and wondered who he was.

He didn’t know when he’d stopped being Klaus. Was it when Aidan was no longer there to whisper and write it?

Four's uneven teeth bit into a long nail, hair a multicoloured mess of lengths, a leg bigger than the other. He rasped with one asthmatic lung and moaned in pain at the feeling of ribs too small and a heart too big and a throat too deep and patches of differently coloured skin painting his frame.

When did Four stop feeling human?

Four didn’t know who Klaus was anymore. 

  
He briefly remembered what it was like when Aidan was there to tell him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: body horror, missing person/runnaway , social exclusion, suicide note (could be interpreted as one, but technically isn't), heart attack, seizure, loss of identity, dissassociation (briefly).


	3. Honourable Discharge.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The day Ben was hospitalised he showed everyone why he was “The Horror”. Saturated in gore and clinging to life in a hospital bed, he received an honourable discharge from his father’s child army.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brace for impact, things are about to go south.

[No one really knows what happened that day.

Ben was Severely injured and kept to a hospital bed for half a year. We were forbidden to visit him, and I don’t believe any of our hand-made cards ever reached his bedside.

By the time we were all making plans to leave home, Reginald told us Ben was no longer useful to the academy and that we wouldn’t see him again.]

  
———

The mission was supposed to be simple. Secure the hostage, put up a fight for PR, and out in time for tea. 

A rich man called Wilson Griffith reported his 19-year-old son was kidnapped from his estate. The son was being held for a several million-dollar ransoms, and instead of going to the police, Griffith decided to call Reginald and have five super-powered 17 year-olds stage a rescue for publicity. 

Securing the hostage was the easy part. A broken window here and a distraction there and an unharmed Sam Griffith was in a near-buy car that drove off before the door was shut, speeding down the road. 

Subduing the criminals was the hard part. The near-infinite assailants that had been manning the warehouse, now infuriated by children even younger than their hostage, were getting violent.

Armed with firepower and decked out in black tactical gear, they all filled the bill for stereotypical baddies. 

Luther was throwing them left and right, herding criminals out of the building and preventing any of the smarter ones from running. Diego was using knives to incapacitate as many as possible, even using metal debris to do the job when he ran out of blades and ignored their father’s kill-on-sight order. Allison rumoured criminals to fight for them, thinning out the opposition, and Four was scouting the rest of the nearby warehouses for strugglers under the disguised of a henchman but with a noticeable number 4 on the back of a bulletproof vest so his siblings didn't mistake him for someone else. 

Ben hid just inside beside the now-evacuated building, not wanting to get into any fights, and ducked whenever he heard footsteps. He was afraid, and rightfully so. As they got older, They had gotten stronger and more bloodthirsty, less likely to listen to Ben. They acted like a separate entity and Ben missed when he got along with the creature that resides within him. 

Reginald had tried to teach him to be stronger, but the lessons mainly taught him fear. They didn’t like restraint and Ben was too afraid to give Them what They wanted.

A stray bullet caught on a wire, a high tension cable whipping down and slashing at where Ben was hidden. He cried out, all attention stolen by the agony painting his vision red, and They retaliated, bursting forth and consuming anything They could reach. 

The warehouse collapsed onto Them, Ben was crushed under the roof and Their black limbs wreathed under the weight of it all in an effort to keep its host alive. 

The next time Ben woke, it was to the sensation of being alone.

———

The building crashed down and all hell broke loose. Criminals scattered like rats, dodging people in navy-coloured uniforms that had arrived sometime during the commotion with the flashing lights and sirens. 

The Umbrella Academy members put their efforts into damage limitation now that authorities arrived. Diego ran forward to try and pull back some of the debris to clear a path to the epicentre of the collapse, helping the people in uniforms. 

Ben— where was Ben?

Behind Four was Luther, handing a criminal off in handcuffs and turning to spout orders. Looking to his left, he spotted Allison with her hands covering her mouth in horror. He followed her line of sight back to the wreckage. 

“Ben?”

Four looked down and saw black blood pooled from the building and down the incline of the plot’s entryway, the liquid reaching his feet. He heard the creaking of the collapsed structure, fire brigade shifting sheets of metal to find the source of the viscera.

He caught sight of a limp left arm bearing a familiar tattoo, coated in wet blood.

Four screamed and charged forward, barely caught by the arm by Luther who restrained him to let the paramedics do their job. By the time their brother was unearthed and loaded into an ambulance, the police had handled the criminals.

“Number one, Number Four will be coming with me in the ambulance.”

“Yessir.” Luther rasped, throat tight, and nodded. He was their leader, Leaders don’t get distracted. Finish the mission. Do as you're ordered and cry later.

He followed Reginald to a medical vehicle, throwing Four down onto the bench next to Ben so hard his head bounced on the interior. Their father huffed in what Luther was sick to recognise as exasperation, “I will send for someone to retrieve you. You are to stay with the others here until they arrive.”

Four wept in the back, bawling into his fists as his hair changed from blonde to black and his clothes shifted back into the recognisable uniform. His eyes trailed up Ben’s arm, past the oxygen mask and lingered to find some semblance of consciousness or life. The paramedic in the back with them leant over his brother, obscuring his view, and when he leant back there was enough bandages on his head that not a single strand of black hair was visible. 

“The extent of your imitations is about to be put to the test, Number Four.” Reginald explained to the boy in the back, eyebrow twitching in annoyance at the swerving of their vehicle. Even their father seemed put-off, hands grasping his cane in what Four interpreted as stress.

“Do you want Number Six to survive?”

Four finally looked up at him, making eye contact. Reginald would need to be blind to see the raw desperation in those vivid green eyes.

“If that is so, I have an experiment that may save his life.” 

———

Ben’s left hand twitched, lungs rattling. He slowly became aware of the beeping and ringing that took permanent residence in his right ear, then the smell of a sterile room flooded his nose, making him cringe. 

“M’m…”

His voice sounded foreign, slurred and breathy, and felt like it took everything in him to get the syllable out of his chest. 

“Mo—om?” 

Ben groaned, running his tongue over his teeth and tasting mint and plastic. 

After waiting for the sound of footsteps, he drew his attention inwards to the sensation of his pulse across his entire body and the hotness in his limbs. He felt a weight on his chest and a

tightness in his thighs where the sensations cut off. 

He… he couldn’t feel his legs— he couldn’t feel his right arm— God— he hoped it was because of medication. Wait— he can’t— he can’t see—

“Moh!” 

‘ _Please…_ ’

Ben reached up with his left hand, fingers meeting the bandages on his face and dragging his blunt nails over the obstruction. Breath in, breath out, breath in, breath—

“Mom!”

The beeping got louder and Ben heard a shuffling to his side. 

‘ _Please be okay…_ ’ —who?

“MOM!”

Ben’s chest thumped rhythmically as if someone was marching on his chest and his remaining arm fell to his side, the ringing became all he could hear and he couldn’t help but notice that They were blissfully absent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: Massive medical trauma, panic attack, blood (a lot), gore, implied surgery, emotional abuse and manipulation, amputation and visual impairment. 
> 
> Sorry for the late chapter, I've been stewing over it a lot— I wanted to get it right and realised I had to edit it down a bit so it wasn't too angsty.   
> For the next chapter, I'll be adding an illustration, so if you have any aversions to medical trauma, please let me know so I know whether or not it should be an external link.


	4. To your Health

_[The Umbrella Academy took a blow after Ben, no one knew what happened to Four, only that they disappeared at the same time._  
 _3 months later, Four’s treasured possessions were absent from their room and a bold [“FUCK YOU REGINALD”] was scrawled across the bottom half their bedroom door in black capitals,_ _signed with a [—No.4]. I wonder where they went— who they became._  
 _Sometimes I see green-eyed strangers and wonder if it’s them._  
 _If they ever read this, I want them to know they’re welcome to drop by.]_

* * *

  
Four stirred from his sleep, vaguely aware of the experimental procedure Reginald preformed. He tried to wiggle his toes and was greeted with a burning absence. 

The bed was soft, something Four had come to associate with the infirmary, and it unsettled him. It grounded him firmly in the dull sensations that met him as he felt his own body.

His left hand was braced against his soft belly-button-less stomach and he realised he still resembled Ben. He scrunched up his small nose, tongue dancing overly familiar teeth and felt the texture of Ben’s hands— Hand. 

There's only one now.

His other forearm ended in a bracelet of numb agony that left nothing to the imagination.

He shifted his skin and hair so that they felt more familiar and found his mass diminished. Reginald always said the restriction of his power was the conservation of mass: if Four lost a limb, it would take weeks of eating to regain it (he still had nightmares about his fingers being cut off).

He was in pain— perhaps that was what woke him— and he wanted to call Mom to up the morphine or whatever else she had him on.

Four sat up, pushing himself upright with his singular hand and pushed the bed cover off of himself, hand groping his thighs to see where the bandages started and his limbs ended. The blood in his ears picked up with the effort burning his core to stay sat up while unbalanced and unfamiliar with his own state. Four tipped over, putting his only hand out to balance himself and almost made the mistake of using his right, only to remember he didn’t have it.

He looked where his wrist ended, only to be met with darkness.

Ben must have lost a his eyes. It would explain the lack of sight. Four didn’t know how he hadn’t noticed.

The dizziness increased, pain thrumming everywhere and, not having the energy to call out, he disconnected the pulse oximeter from his finger with his teeth, and his hand inadvertently landed on the bandages on his face before dropping back to his lap.

The door hinges squeaked and he heard a female voice call for a doctor. Footsteps approached him shortly after.

* * *

It took 2 months of healing before Four could walk again. He wasn’t supposed to, but he also wasn’t staying locked up under medical professionals doped up without the dignity to use a toilet any longer. 

Having studied veterinary textbooks when he was younger, he took advantage of his lower mass and shape-shifted into a dog. 

An interesting ordeal later, and he was out of the building, running home with as much grace as a newly four-legged ex-ICU patient could manage, the beeping of heart monitors still drilled into his skull and phantom-wounds scarring his canine form with a limp. 

Trouble was, coming from an isolated existence under Reginald meant he had no idea how to navigate life outside the academy. 

Scampering down alleyways and eating out of dumpsters for food taught him a lot. It taught him independence, it taught him how to survive, but it also taught him silence. Meditation.

Without a human voice-box (not that he was incapable of shifting into a talking dog) and the lack of companionship lead to a singular narrative. Introspection, he found after several days, lead him down the path of self-criticism, and he realised home wasn’t the umbrella academy. It was Aidan’s books and Ben’s drawings. 

Home was his brothers’ happiness. One was gone and the other was likely falling to the same fate. 

It took him a month before he found The Umbrella Academy.

It took him years before he felt at home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the short chapter, but this is where the real fun begins for this fic :)
> 
> Hope you like the art!!

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there! For the first time, I'm attempting a bigger writing project than I usually take on in celebration of Season 2 coming up! 
> 
> All comments are appreciated and all kudos are sacred! I hope you enjoyed reading :) stay tuned for more!  
> 


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